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Mystery, Crime & Detective · NBC

The New Adventures of Nero Wolfe

September 13, 1943 – April 27, 1951 · 28 broadcasts

Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe is a detective built around a refusal: some three hundred pounds of genius who will not leave his West 35th Street brownstone, will not miss a meal, and will not be hurried away from his orchids. The legwork falls to Archie Goodwin, who does the walking, the wisecracking, and most of the arguing about money. NBC's 1950-51 series is the version that fixed the character in the public ear. Sydney Greenstreet -- 70 years old, newly retired from pictures after a decade of playing genial monsters -- gave Wolfe a voice of enormous, unhurried weight, and it became the last major role of his career. Archie proved harder to cast: six actors took the part across twenty-six weeks, among them Lawrence Dobkin, Gerald Mohr and Harry Bartell. The scripts were original, not adaptations -- Stout licensed his characters but not his plots -- and the show leaned on character and banter where other half-hour mysteries leaned on plot. It ran Friday nights, sustained, from October 1950 to April 1951. Every episode survives except one.

Collection status: 26 of 28 held (93% complete)
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Episode Spine

Grouped by year. Jump to the full list below, or open a season on its own page.

1943

September 13, 1943 The Case of the Plastered Bride

1946

December 15, 1946 The Shakespeare Folio Listen (MP3)

1950

October 20, 1950 Stamped for Murder Listen (MP3)
Wolfe has just sunk nearly $4,000 into orchids, so Archie is desperate for a paying client -- and one is waiting. Gloria Kent's father spent the $10,000 she inherited from her mother on a treasure map she knows to be a swindle, and she wants it recovered without scandal.
October 27, 1950 The Care Worn Cuff Listen (MP3)
Charles Porter telephones the dozing Wolfe with the one proposition guaranteed to interest him: a thousand dollars to do absolutely nothing.
November 3, 1950 The Dear, Dead Lady Listen (MP3)
Down from the orchids and midway through an extravagant order to the delicatessen, Wolfe has bills to pay and no intention of working for the money. Archie sets about changing his mind.
November 10, 1950 Headless Hunter
November 17, 1950 The Careless Cleaner Listen (MP3)
A stabbing in a gentlemen's club -- the victim a woman, which is the first thing wrong with it. Wolfe is broke again, so Archie argues the fee rather than the puzzle.
November 24, 1950 The Beautiful Archer Listen (MP3)
December 1, 1950 The Friendly Rabbit Listen (MP3)
Archie hangs up the telephone with peculiar news: a rabbit is about to commit a murder, or else become one. Wolfe has a case either way.
December 8, 1950 The Impolite Corpse Listen (MP3)
December 15, 1950 The Girl Who Cried Wolfe Listen (MP3)
December 22, 1950 The Slaughtered Santas Listen (MP3)
A charity Santa is ringing his bell on a freezing Thirty-Fourth Street corner and packing up for the night when a car with its headlights switched off comes down the street at speed.
December 29, 1950 The Bashful Body Listen (MP3)
A telephone call sends Archie to a florist's shop, where a killing has been prepared with roughly the patience Wolfe gives his orchids.

1951

January 5, 1951 Deadly Sell-Out Listen (MP3)
January 12, 1951 The Killer Cards Listen (MP3)
Steven Denby pays Wolfe to preside over a card game between the two men who jointly own the Candy Club. Archie works out the reason: one of the players is expected to be death -- and Archie himself is put up as the stake.
January 19, 1951 The Calculated Risk Listen (MP3)
January 26, 1951 The Phantom Fingers Listen (MP3)
It takes a black orchid to move Wolfe: he agrees to travel upstate to see Mr. Finley's rare strain. The killing that gives the case its name has nothing to do with the flowers, and began somewhere else entirely.
February 2, 1951 The Vanishing Shells Listen (MP3)
Threatening notes have kept Doris Moray shut in her hotel room. Archie is nobody's fool, except in the one reliable way -- and Miss Moray is a beautiful woman.
February 16, 1951 The Party for Death Listen (MP3)
Wolfe accepts Mrs. Collins's cocktail invitation and then delegates the attending to Archie -- who arrives to find that this particular party has death on the guest list.
February 23, 1951 The Malevolent Medic Listen (MP3)
Young Dr. Benjamin Sloan earns the name that stuck to the case, in a killing salted with false clues throughout. It starts on a sunny afternoon, when his nurse Grace Banks steps into his private office.
March 2, 1951 The Hasty Will Listen (MP3)
Archie is midway through his standing lecture about the household finances when a stranger calling himself John Blake telephones in some urgency -- and names a thousand-dollar fee.
March 9, 1951 The Disappearing Diamonds Listen (MP3)
A burglar named Willy Ince did a tidy job of a house and one careless thing: he left a print on the door on his way through. A woman is afterwards found dead in that room, and Ince comes to Wolfe to keep the murder off him.
March 16, 1951 The Midnight Ride Listen (MP3)
March 23, 1951 The Final Page Listen (MP3)
Dinner at the Merle house does not go ahead as planned. Wolfe has barely arrived before the host, Arthur Merle, is discovered stabbed.
March 30, 1951 The Tell-Tale Ribbon Listen (MP3)
Five hundred dollars turns up with an unsigned note attached. Following the money takes Wolfe into a household of decidedly peculiar people, and a death by poison.
April 6, 1951 A Slight Case of Perjury Listen (MP3)
Tom Wilcox walked free on a charge of killing a singer, and now wants an hour of Wolfe's time. He does not get to the end of the phone call: a shot cuts him off, and Archie is left holding a dead line.
April 20, 1951 The Lost Heir Listen (MP3)
The papers had it that a blind industrialist, Horace Kraile, had welcomed home a daughter he believed dead for thirteen years. Kraile suspects an impostor, and asks Wolfe to stop a murder before it happens.
April 27, 1951 Room 304 Listen (MP3)
The caller from the Port Hotel gets as far as naming her room number and her price -- a thousand dollars -- before the line goes wrong. By the time Archie reaches room 304 the client is beyond hiring anyone.
The Story

Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe is a detective built around a refusal: some three hundred pounds of genius who will not leave his West 35th Street brownstone, will not miss a meal, and will not be hurried away from his orchids. The legwork falls to Archie Goodwin, who does the walking, the wisecracking, and most of the arguing about money. NBC's 1950-51 series is the version that fixed the character in the public ear. Sydney Greenstreet -- 70 years old, newly retired from pictures after a decade of playing genial monsters -- gave Wolfe a voice of enormous, unhurried weight, and it became the last major role of his career. Archie proved harder to cast: six actors took the part across twenty-six weeks, among them Lawrence Dobkin, Gerald Mohr and Harry Bartell. The scripts were original, not adaptations -- Stout licensed his characters but not his plots -- and the show leaned on character and banter where other half-hour mysteries leaned on plot. It ran Friday nights, sustained, from October 1950 to April 1951. Every episode survives except one.

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